Corking

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ruin7734

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So I soaked my corks for about 30-45 mins before bottling, and after about 3 weeks I get little bits of cork floating in my beautiful Cyser. Not that its totally detrimental, but it is rather annoying. Should I have soaked longer? Soaked at a specific temp? What did I do wrong?
 
It may depend on your corks, but from everything I've read, you're not supposed to soak them long, if at all. I'm sure others will chime in.
 
I only dip them in sanitizer for about 10 seconds. So far that has worked very well for me. No crumbly corks.
 
Well if your using k-meta as your sanitizer, you can make a extra strong batch of sanitizing solution in the bottom of a bucket. Then suspend some corks above the solution in a mesh bag/strainer/etc and let the SO2 gas do the sanitizing.
But generally no you shouldn't be soaking, never boil your corks.
 
The method I've used that seems to work pretty good and I believe Yooper also talked about something similar in other threads is I take a glass bowl and put a cup of boiling water and a crushed campden tablet in it, then I set another high side but smaller diamater bowl inside of that, place the corks in a single layer as best as I can around the inside of the dry bowl then plastioce wrap the top of the whole thing, it creates a nice steam bath for the corks then after 10-15 minutes I take it all apart and the corks hang out in the bowl til I use them.
 
The method I've used that seems to work pretty good and I believe Yooper also talked about something similar in other threads is I take a glass bowl and put a cup of boiling water and a crushed campden tablet in it, then I set another high side but smaller diamater bowl inside of that, place the corks in a single layer as best as I can around the inside of the dry bowl then plastioce wrap the top of the whole thing, it creates a nice steam bath for the corks then after 10-15 minutes I take it all apart and the corks hang out in the bowl til I use them.
 
I gas them with camden tabs for long term stuff or just a mist from starsan spray bottle for short term wines.

NO soaking, NO boiling
 
I just spray mine with a home brew sanitiser i.e. 5 crushed campden tablets and 1 tsp of citric acid dissolved in 500 ml of water. That lives in a spray bottle and I just spray them, leave them for 2 or 3 minutes and then use them....
 
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